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Article

18 Dec 2014

Author:
Jo Swinson, The Huffington Post

Commentary: UK Business Minister Jo Swinson, on "Benchmarking Business Ethics" in the Huffington Post

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For decades, a company's performance has been measured almost exclusively in economic terms. Social and environmental issues...have been seen as immaterial to how a company should be valued and how investors should assess performance. This is finally - and thankfully - changing. Increasingly, companies are asked to demonstrate good performance in social and environmental terms...Poor human rights performance is not just an issue for business executives' consciences: there is a cost impact... What is still needed, however, is an objective way of assessing what 'good' and 'bad' human rights performance actually looks like in practical terms - a way of comparing one company's performance against another's... That is why I am pledging start-up funding to a new scheme that will benchmark the human rights performance of international corporations. The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark will drive responsible business practices by developing a transparent, publicly available and credible assessment and ranking of company human rights performance... I believe that the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark - unpinned by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights - will play a major role in bringing about a world where more companies play their full part in social and economic development. I'm urging other countries to join the UK in supporting this initiative.

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